”This took place during the reign of Ahaz, son of Jotham, son of Uzziah king of Judah: Rezin king of Aram, along with Pekah, son of Remaliah, king of Israel, waged war against Jerusalem, but he could not succeed. When it became known to the house of David that Aram had occupied Ephraim, the heart of Ahaz and the hearts of his people trembled like trees of a forest shaking in the wind. Then the Lord said to Isaiah, “Go out with your son Shear-jashub to meet Ahaz at the end of the conduit of the upper pool, by the road to the Fuller’s Field. Say to him: Calm down and be quiet. Don’t be afraid or cowardly because of these two smoldering stubs of firebrands, the fierce anger of Rezin and Aram, and the son of Remaliah. For Aram, along with Ephraim and the son of Remaliah, has plotted harm against you. They say, ‘Let us go up against Judah, terrorize it, and conquer it for ourselves. Then we can install Tabeel’s son as king in it.’ ” This is what the Lord God says: It will not happen; it will not occur. The head of Aram is Damascus, the head of Damascus is Rezin (within 65 years Ephraim will be too shattered to be a people), the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is the son of Remaliah. If you do not stand firm in your faith, then you will not stand at all. Then the Lord spoke again to Ahaz: “Ask for a sign from the Lord your God — from the depths of Sheol to the heights of heaven.” But Ahaz replied, “I will not ask. I will not test the Lord.” Isaiah said, “Listen, house of David! Is it not enough for you to try the patience of men? Will you also try the patience of my God? Therefore, the Lord Himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive, have a son, and name him Immanuel. By the time he learns to reject what is bad and choose what is good, he will be eating butter and honey. For before the boy knows to reject what is bad and choose what is good, the land of the two kings you dread will be abandoned. The Lord will bring on you, your people, and the house of your father, such a time as has never been since Ephraim separated from Judah — the king of Assyria is coming.” …The Lord spoke to me again: Because these people rejected the slowly flowing waters of Shiloah and rejoiced with Rezin and the son of Remaliah, the Lord will certainly bring against them the mighty rushing waters of the Euphrates River — the king of Assyria and all his glory. It will overflow its channels and spill over all its banks. It will pour into Judah, flood over it, and sweep through, reaching up to the neck; and its spreading streams will fill your entire land, Immanuel.“ (Isaiah 7:1-8:8 HCSB)
Key verse: “If you do not stand firm in your faith, they you will not stand at all.” In essence: If you have no faith then you have nothing. To trust God is to have everything, to doubt Him is to have nothing. Faith is life, distrust is death.
Pride is a difficult thing to overcome. I’m not sure we realize just how much pride drives us, controls us and blinds us from truly seeing ourselves or from seeing the truth about life, in general. Is it wrong to have a strong sense of self worth and confidence in our own abilities? Not as long as it is kept in proper balance and perspective. As Paul says, ”For by the grace given to me, I tell everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he should think. Instead, think sensibly, as God has distributed a measure of faith to each one.“ (Romans 12:3 HCSB)
We can and should see ourselves as creatures made in the very image of God, but we must not think more highly of ourselves than is sensible and proper considering that divine/human distinction and tension that we considered last week. God loves us and desires for us to know Him – but to know Him in proper perspective and in right relationship with Him. To know Him on His terms and in complete obedience and absolute trust. But our pride always gets in the way.
This week’s focal passage is larger than the quote I have placed, above. I would suggest you go and read the entire passage, Isaiah 7:1 through 8:8, if you haven’t already. It is clear, from Isaiah’s opening statement, that the events surrounding this passage come sometime (approx. 5 years – 735 BC) after the events in the previous chapter. Uzziah has now died and his son, Ahaz, rules as king over Judah. The threat from Assyria is still on the horizon, but Ahaz decides to use Assyria as a means to assuage the immediate threat from Israel and Aram. Rezin, king of Aram, and Pekah, king of Israel, want Ahaz and the people of Judah to join with them to stand against the Assyrians. Because Ahaz refuses, they plan on attacking Judah, removing Ahaz and placing Tabeel, their puppet ruler, on the throne of Judah. Then Tabeel will side with them in resisting the onslaught from Assyria.
One thing that stands out in Isaiah’s retelling of these historical facts are the genealogical references to the kings of Israel and Judah but not to the king of Aram. Notice, he references Ahaz and notes that he is the son of Jotham, who is the son of Uzziah king of Judah. He then doesn’t mention any genealogical ties for Rezin, king of Aram but does it again when he references Pekah, son of Remaliah, king of Israel. But why?
He makes that very clear in the very next sentence, “When it became known to the house of David that Aram had occupied Ephraim, the heart of Ahaz and the hearts of his people trembled like trees of a forest shaking in the wind.” Did you catch it? He said that when Aram’s occupation of Ephraim became known “to the house of David” then Ahaz and the people began to tremble like trees in the wind. God’s promises of protection are given to His covenant people, not just anyone. In other words, Ahaz had no reason to fear these men as long as he remained faithful and trusted in the LORD God who promised to establish, preserve and protect the throne of David, forever.
In response, God sends Isaiah out to meet king Ahaz as he is inspecting and preparing for their attack. The king has gone out and is inspecting the water source that feeds into Jerusalem which is the conduit that carries water from the upper pool, by the road to the Fuller’s Field. A walled city cannot survive a long siege unless they have a water source that can survive the attack.
Isaiah gives Ahaz a message from God: “Calm down, be quiet. Don’t be afraid of these two smoking pieces of firewood.” Their fire has been quenched and barely smolders and they won’t be a threat to you much longer. What they plan to do, won’t happen. Just trust ME. If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all. The God tells Ahaz, “Ask for a sign from the LORD your God – ask anything, from the depths of Sheol to the heights of heaven.” God offers Ahaz a sign and we can only assume it is God’s way of proving Himself to Ahaz and eliciting a faith response from this worried king.
Pay close attention to Ahaz’s response: “I will not ask. I will not test the LORD.” Sounds pious, doesn’t it? But it isn’t, at all! While the phrase may be biblical and is even cited by Jesus during His temptation in the wilderness, in this context it is false piety, or self-righteousness. God has told Ahaz to ask for a sign, any sign he desires. To refuse is not righteous but self-righteous and in direct defiance of God.
This phrase – do not tempt/test the LORD your God – comes from the story of Israel’s rebellion in the wilderness at Meribah (see Exodus 17). They needed water and questioned, “Is the LORD is among us or not?” Moses’ response was, “Don’t test Him or you’ll find out.” Ahaz’s response could have been one of faith, “I don’t need a sign God, I trust You and will obey You.” But it wasn’t. It was a response of rebellious pride: “I WILL not ask. I don’t need a sign from God. I won’t test Him to see if He’s trustworthy or not. I have my own way and my own plans to deal with this situation.”
Let me make this simple, if God offers you a sign – take it! Believe Him. Trust Him. Follow Him because that sign affirms your faith. But if He doesn’t, don’t test Him by demanding one. He’s already given us sufficient evidence of who He is to elicit a faith response from us. Let me be blunt, the empty tomb was ENOUGH! (See Matt. 12:38-42) Fall before Him in faith and rise up and walk with Him in obedience.
Now we get into a mysterious and powerful passage full of both intense judgment and incredible promise. Isaiah gives God’s response to Ahaz’s rejection of God’s offer of a sign: “Listen, house of David! Is it not enough for you to try the patience of men? Will you also try the patience of my God? Therefore, the LORD Himself will give [all of] you a sign: The virgin will conceive, have a son, and name him Immanuel.” Isaiah goes on to say that before the boy is very old, the two kings they fear will be gone – the land completely abandoned – and they will experience a time of suffering like they’ve never known, for the king of Assyria is coming.”
Isaiah says that God will simply whistle and the flies from Egypt and the bees from Assyria will come, spreading over the land and over everything and everyone. He then tells them that God will use a “hired razor” – the king of Assyria – to shave them from head to toe, including the beard, and leave them utterly disgraced. The hills that are covered with beautiful vineyards will be covered in thorns and briers, trampled under the oxen and eaten by the sheep. They will have nothing to eat but butter and honey – nothing they cultivate or produce but only what they are able to scrape together and find in the overgrown wilderness that was once their beautiful and lush home, Judah.
So, I called this passage as mysterious and full of intense judgment and incredible promise. It is a bit mysterious. We know the passage as one cited by Matthew as being fulfilled in the life of King Jesus, full of incredible, realized promise in the Messiah. Yet, Isaiah gives it as one of intense judgment in response to Ahaz’s refusal to be calm, quiet and willing to trust God in the circumstances of that day. Can it possibly be both?
To us, the idea of prophecy carries the sense of being all about what will happen in some far-off, distant, future period of time. But in another sense, Biblical prophecy has both a “here and now” element and a “what then” element. It is both a shadow – what happens now – and its reality – what happens then. The writer of Hebrews put it like this, ”Now faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen… By faith we understand that the universe was created by God’s command, so that what is seen has been made from things that are not visible.“ (Hebrews 11:1, 3 HCSB https://bible.com/bible/72/heb.11.1-3.HCSB)
The mysterious nature of this passage is that it is both a declaration of God’s intense judgment upon king Ahaz and the house of David for their lack of faith and one of incredible promise for the “seed in the stump” or the remnant of God’s people who refuse to abandon their faith in Him. What’s important is that we also see it as both – a word of intense judgment and of incredible promise.
It is easy to read this passage and to hear Isaiah’s words of judgment and to pass them off as having been fulfilled in the lives of God’s people as they suffered under the attacks from the Assyrian onslaught. But to do so is to miss the mysterious nature of the prophecy. For not only was it fulfilled in the ears of the people who heard it from Isaiah’s cleansed lips, but it is being fulfilled in our ears as the promised child, Immanuel – God With/Among Us, continues to seek those who will walk in obedience with Him by faith.
I want to stress to you, it is not sufficient for any of us to take on an air of self-righteousness as Ahaz did. Ahaz tried to hide his rebellion to God’s will by citing scripture and claiming he didn’t want to “test the LORD.” We often stand in self-righteous rebellion before God wanting to cite all of the good things we have done and continue to do. Why would God judge me? I’m a good mother, a good dad. I’m a hard worker and a loyal patriot. While most of those things are not morally bad, they are not a response to faith in God. God doesn’t just call us to be good people, but to walk with Him in obedience and faith.
You can be a morally good dad, protecting and providing for your family but if you fail to lead your children to live by faith in obedience to God then you’ve not been the kind of dad that God wants. You can be a morally good mom, providing excellent care and love for your children but if you fail to lead them into faith and obedience towards God then you’ve not been the kind of mom God desires. You can be a morally good person, caring about people and helping them where you can but the failure to be light and salt in this world and to point them towards faith in Jesus means you’ve failed to be the person God wants you to be.
But doesn’t God want me to be a good, moral person? Yes, but that’s not all He wants. By the way, I don’t think you can be a truly good, moral person without faith in Him. Remember what I said last week? We are not as good as we think we are and we are far more evil than we would ever admit. We think we’re good, but we are fooled by the lies of the deceiver. We base our belief in our own goodness by comparing ourselves to one another, never to Jesus. He wants people who love Him, who trust Him, who believe Him and His word and strive to live in accordance with it. Why? Because He’s God, we’re not and He knows what we need even better than we do ourselves.
In case you’ve missed it, that’s really the point that God, through Isaiah, is trying to make. Ahaz thinks he’s making the right choice for the people. He’s trying to stem the tide through his political alliance with Assyria. God says, you’re a fool for not trusting me. In this last section of our focal passage, Isaiah 8:1-8, God wants us to recognize the danger they truly face. Isaiah’s wife conceives and bears him a son, whom he names “Maher-shalal-hash-baz” or “spoil speeds, prey hastens”. Why that name? Because before the boy is old enough to say “dada” or “mama” the wealth of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria will be carried off by the king of Assyria.
But because they refuse to put their trust in God, Assyria is going to wash over them like a flood, too. They refuse the gentle, flowing waters of Shiloah (the spring that feeds water to Jerusalem) so the flood waters of the Euphrates (a euphemistic reference to the Assyrian king) will sweep them away. They refuse to trust God, so He refuses to hold back the aggressions of Assyria and it will wash over them like the Euphrates river does when the floods follow the rainy season.
Notice how Isaiah ends this passage, “O Immanuel.” It is Isaiah’s cry of hope. Hope in God’s mysterious promise, the promise of His presence that carries both judgment and salvation. Judgment for those who refuse to trust, salvation for those who do. As the flood spreads over the land, the cry “O Immanuel” goes out. Oh God, be with us. Don’t forsake those who truly trust in You.
Let me assure you, this mysterious prophecy still carries the same weight of intense judgment and incredible promise for you and me. We can either trust God and stop relying on political alliances and experience the power of His promised Son or we will know the devastating power of the flood of His judgment that sweeps through the land.
Will you trust Him and rejoice in His salvation or reject Him and suffer His judgment? Oh God, help us… come among us, sweep across our land and bring your judgment and your salvation.
Hilltop Baptist Church - Shawnee, OK 
Leave a comment